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oktober 09, 2005

Metaforer för att beskriva marknaden påverkar marknaden?

Det kanske inte är någon överraskning att vi påverkas av metaforer som används för att beskriva olika fenomen, speciellt inte för dem som läst t.ex. Geoge Lakoff et.al. om hur genomträngande ("pervasiva") metaforerna är i språket. Se t.ex. Kort om George Lakoff & Mark Turner: "Metaphors we live by" och lite annat relaterat till Lakoff för mer information.

Michael W. Morris från Columbia University Business School har genom att studera journalisters metaforiska beskrivningar av börsen samt experiment bland studenter, funnit troligt att mer figurativa metaforer påverkar åtminsone icke-professionella placerare.

Från artikeln Metaphors affect investors, researcher says:

The way we talk about the stock market has a lot to do with the way people respond to market changes – especially if we are listening to a reporter.
...
My research has to do with business journalism," said Morris, an advocate of the growing field of behavioral economics. He believes television's expanding role in business and market reporting in the '90s contributed to the Wall Street mania.

"Rationally, we know that when the market has gone up sharply it is better to sell than to buy, but emotionally we feel we want to jump on the bandwagon," Morris said.
...
In a sense, his research reaffirms one of the fundamentals of modern philosophy, that the reality we perceive is part us and part outside world. According to Morris, our minds are not wired to understand random systems, so we impose patterns where they may not exist.

"We anthropomorphize things, and this has consequences in the stock market because metaphors carry implications, in the sense that the event being described is seen as purposeful and goal-oriented. We take that to mean it is likely to continue," he said.

Artikeln avslutas med följande visdomsord:

The plain fact about the stock market, said Morris, is that on a short-term basis, "today's direction in the market tells you absolutely nothing about tomorrow's movement."

Se även rapporten av Michael W. Morris, Oliver J. Sheldon, Daniel R. Ames, Maia J. Young: Metaphor in Stock Market Commentary: Consequences and Preconditions of Agentic Descriptions of Price Trends (PDF, och är vid bloggningen oläst.)

Abstract:


We investigated the consequences and preconditions of two types of metaphors in stock market commentary. Agent metaphors describe price trends as actions of an animate, self- propelled actor, whereas object metaphors describe them as movements of an inanimate object caused by external physical forces. Study 1 examined the consequences of commentary for lay investors’ judgments. Agent metaphors, compared with object metaphors and non-metaphoric descriptions, caused investors to expect price trend continuance. The remaining studies examined preconditions, the features of a trend that cause commentators to use agent versus object metaphors. We hypothesized that the rate of agentic metaphors would depend on the trend direction (upday vs downday) and steadiness (steady vs unsteady). Two archival studies tracked the metaphoric content in end-of-day CNBC commentary as function of daily price trajectories. As predicted, agent metaphors were more likely for uptrends than downtrends and especially so when the trends were relatively steady. This held for both bull (Study 2) and bear market periods (Study 3). Study 4 replicated these findings in a laboratory study where participants took the role of a stock market commentator. We discuss implications of these findings for the literatures on metaphoric cognition and financial judgment.

Posted by hakank at oktober 9, 2005 12:06 EM Posted to Spelteori och ekonomi | Språk